Gunnar POV
As soon as Ayla agreed to the walk, I knew I'd made the right call.
She looked like she'd been drowning when she opened the door.
Not crying exactly. Past that. The kind of grief that hollowed a person out from the inside. I'd seen it before. Not often. Mostly at funerals.
The walk gave her something else to focus on. The estate. The lake. The stories. And it gave me a chance to figure out who exactly Ayla Easton was. I kept the questions casual. Where she grew up. What she did for work. Whether she'd ever been here before. That answer surprised me. Not because she'd said no. Because of the way she'd said it.
Carefully.
Like admitting she'd never been here cost her something. Interesting. When she told me she'd never even seen the place in person until tonight, something c
